While the Tame Apple Press made much out of Apple's lack lustre results by talking up its smartphone prowess in China, it appears that things are not well behind the Bamboo curtain.

Beancounters at IDC say that smartphone growth in China has contracted for the first time in six years which indicates that Apple is not going to pull its nadgers out of the fire by expanding into China.

According to IDC, smartphone shipments fell in Q1 2015 by 4 percent compared to the same quarter last year, with shipments totalling 98.8 million.

Comparing data from this quarter to Q4 2014, the research firm states that shipments have fallen by 8 percent. The stumped growth is believed to be related to the struggle of convincing those already with a smartphone to switch, much like other developed markets.

Kitty Fok, managing director at IDC China said that while China is often thought of as an emerging market but the reality is that the vast majority of phones sold in China today are smartphones, similar to other mature markets like the US, UK, Australia, and Japan."Just like these markets, convincing existing users as well as feature phone users to upgrade to new smartphones will now be the key to further growth in the China market."

So in otherwords the numbers who can actually afford Smartphones is limited, and those who can afford them are not stupid enough to buy a new one every year.

While Apple does sit at the top of the charts, shipping nearly 15 million devices since 2015 it is being chased by local manufacturer Xiaomi sits with 13.5 million shipments. Microsoft has been attempting to push through mid-range handsets like the Lumia 830.

However if interest in smartphones continues to fall, then Apple's hope to replace its falling tablet sales with smartphone sales in China is going to fall flat.

LG sold a record high number of smartphones but its mobile profit was thin. Even after selling 15.4 million smartphones, up 26 percent, the division's operating profit margin was just 2 percent. Apple's margin was more than 20 percent while Samsung's was about 10 percent.

The company is struggling to gain a slice of the high-end smartphone market dominated by Apple and Samsung.

LG's weak brand power and low marketing budget have hampered its efforts to advance in the premium market and give its new smartphones wider recognition. Its smartphone sales growth was driven by solid sales of budget phones in North America.

LG began sales of the flagship G4 smartphones in South Korea on Wednesday and they will hit shelves in global markets in coming months.

According to a report from Mirae Asset Securities Co, LG will sell 15 million smartphones in the second quarter of 2014, or 5 million a month between April and June. This would be a great achievement for LG which sold 12.1 million smartphones in the second quarter last year.

The main reason for high sales analysts see in affordable smartphones, especially the L and F series as well as the LG G2 mini. The LG G2 or other flagship products were surprisingly not mentioned and it was the same LG G2 which was sold in 3 million units last year so high-end from LG might boost sale numbers as well.

Of course, in the flagship market, LG has a lot of competition now that Samsung, HTC and Sony are ready with their own high-end smartphones.

Lenovo did not want to miss out the Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona and has brought no less than three new mid- to entry-level smartphones, the Lenovo S860, S850 and the S660.

The most expensive of them all, the Lenovo S860 is more of a bussines oriented 5.3-inch smartphone built around a 5.3-inch 720p IPS panel. It features a quad-core 1.3GHz clocked Mediatek SoC, 2GB of RAM, 8-megapixel rear and 1.6-megapixel front snappers, rather impressive 4000mAh battery and a metal back. Thanks to a rather hefty 4000mAh battery, the device has the ability to charge other devices via its microUSB port.

Next in line is more of designer-oriented Lenovo S850, which has a thinner, lighter, all-glass body and is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core Mediatek SoC. The phone is designed around a 5-inch 720p IPS screen and has 1GB of RAM, 12-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel fron one as well as a backlit Lenovo logo which acts as the notification light.

The last is the entry-level, budget-oriented, Lenovo S660 with a 4.7-inch qHD 960x540 panel, 1.3GHz quad-core Mediatek SoC, 1GB of RAM and an 8-megapixel rear camera.

According to Lenovo, all new smartphones should be available as of June this year with a price set at US $349 for the Lenovo S860, US $269 for the S850 and US $229 for the S660.

Weeks ahead of the Mobile World Congress 2014 show in Barcelona, LG has jumped the gun and announced three new L Series III smartphones which will be aimed at entry and mainstream market. The LG L90, L70 and the L40 will be officially showcased at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona which kicks off on February 24th and the new phones will run on Android 4.4 KitKat with LG's own UI on top of it.

The best of the bunch is the new LG L90 which is based around a 4.7-inch qHD 960x540 IPS display and yet to be detailed 1.2GHz quad-core chipset, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. It also comes with 8-megapixel rear and 1.3-megapixel front camera and has a 2540mAh battery. The dimensions are 131.6x66x9.7mm.

Next in line is the L70, based around a smaller 4.5-inch WVGA 800x480 IPS screen and running a 1.2GHz dual-core chipset. It also has 1GB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and either an 8-megapixel or 5-megapixel rear camera, depending on the region it is sold in. It has 127.2x66.8x9.5mm dimensions and has a 2100mAh battery.

The cheapest one, the LG L40, is based on again unnamed 1.2GHz dual-core chipset and 3.5-inch 480x320 resolution screen, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and a 3-megapixel camera. It has a 1700mAh battery and 109.4x59x11.9mm dimensions.

LG is keeping the rest of the information for MWC 2014 but it did release a neat video regarding the new L Series III models which you can check out below.

Nokia is hoping to pull its nadgers out of the fire by releasing a smartphone with a 41-megapixel camera.

The hope is that users will buy phones on the basis of the camera that comes with it. Analysts, however, are skeptical that a new camera for the flagship Lumia smartphone will be enough for the Finnish company to regain market share from Samsung. Several said that Nokia needs to market the handsets more aggressively, something it is running out of cash to do.

Thing is that even if it markets it, who really cares how many pixels a phone camera has?

While everyone, including Microsoft with its new Surface, seems to be trying to score a piece of the tablet market, LG has announced that it pulling out of it in order to focus on smartphones.

Although its pricey Optimus Pad lineup has not been a huge success and, like most tablets on the market, had to compete with Apple's iPad, it is quite a surprise that LG will be exiting such a lucrative market. Now that Microsoft is about to join in, it will be even harder to make any impact on the market.

In an email response to Bloomberg querry, LG's spokeperson noted that LG does not see Surface as a competition to anything that LG is currently focusing on.

Hopefully, this will mean that LG will be able to provide with much better smartphones and improve on its product updating habits.

Basically, the new Xperia P and the Xperia U are smaller versions of the flagship Xperia S that is now officially shipping globally. The Xperia P is a 4-inch 540x960 smartphone that has an aluminum unibody case, something that a lot of consumers will certainly like. The 4-inch Reality touchscreen on the Xperia P features, what Sony calls, White Magic technology that should provide exceptional brightness, at least according to Sony. It also features Mobile Bravia Engine.

The Xperia P packs ST-Ericsson U8500 dual-core 1GHz CPU, 1GB of memory, 16GB of storage space and runs on Android 2.3.7 OS with a dash of Sony's Timescape, while an ICS update should come in the near future. The rest of the features include 8MP rear camera with LED flash and 1080p video recording, front VGA camera, as well as HDMI and USB ports and NFC support. The Xperia P will be available in black, white and red brushed aluminum colors.

The Xperia U is the smallest of the bunch and feature a 3.5-inch 480x854 Reality display and certainly aims at female part of the market with its pink and yellow exchangeable bottom caps for the black and white versions of the phone. The transparent bar also changes colors. The smallest Xperia U packs a dual-core 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage and should ship with the same Gingerbread 2.3.7 OS with Sony Timescape skin. The rest of features include 720p capable 5MP snapper on the back and VGA front one as well as an HDMI output.

Both the new Xperia P and the Xperia U should start shipping in Q2 2012 and prices are yet to be announced.

Samsung is set to report a robust quarterly profit rise on Friday, starting the year on an upbeat note aided by sales of smartphones. Samsung is now the world's top smartphone maker in the third quarter, is continuing to give Apple a good kicking with sleek designs and a rich product line-up.

Its handset division is now Samsung's biggest earnings generator, raking in record profits. The company appears to be dealing with a profit squeeze from its memory chips with new revenue sources such as mobile processing chips and high-end OLED displays.

The world's biggest technology firm by revenue is likely to report $4.1 billion in October-December analyts think. That would be its best profit since the third quarter of 2010, and up 57 percent from a year ago and 11 percent from the preceding quarter.

In 2012, Samsung is likely to report a 28 percent rise in operating profit with a 12 percent gain in revenue, according to analysts.

Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s products was denied on Friday. This means that Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G, Droid Charge and Galaxy Tab 10.1 will not be pulled from retail in the US and, most likely, that legal battles will be Apple’s main business for years to come.

California district judge Lucy Koh said that Apple could not prove that it would be “irreparably harmed” by sales of Samsung’s devices. Koh wrote:"Indeed, given the evidence Samsung presented, it seems likely that a major beneficiary of an injunction would be other smartphone manufacturers."

It was concluded that Apple’s design complaints, including device size, screen size and speaker position, do not hold water. Thus, Apple cannot be the only one that launches such devices. The company is yet to comment on the ruling.

Samsung’s spokesperson, on the other hand, welcomed the ruling and said it confirms that Apple’s arguments are void. More importantly, the company says that it has “raised substantial questions about the validity of Apple design patents.”

The case continues on July 30, 2012, but we’re sure we’ll hear much more by then.